Today’s Windows 7 launch mostly involved stuff we already knew about, but there was a “just one more thing”: Amazon is going to release a Kindle e-book reading application for Windows. It runs on XP, Vista, and Windows 7, and takes advantage of the new touch features in Win 7 to allow gestures for actions such as flipping pages. It uses Kindle’s WhisperSync feature to sync your book library up with any other Kindle-compatible devices you own.

It’s a welcome development, and pretty much a mandatory one for Amazon given that the books Barnes & Noble sells for its new Nook device can also be read on PCs and Macs. (No word on whether Amazon will release a Mac app; if it is, maybe it’s holding back the news a bit to avoid spoiling Microsoft’s party today.)

Few if any PCs are optimized for reading books, and I’ve never bought an e-book primarily to read it on a laptop. But at this point I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on Kindle tomes–and the more devices I can read them on, the merrier. Amazon says the free Kindle app will be available next month,

[…] long-awaited device. We learned of an underdog known as the Spring Design Alex. We saw a demo of an upcoming Amazon Kindle reader application for Windows (a Mac version is also in the works). In short, the era in which it was logical to use […]

[…] News Last month, one of the few new pieces of news at the Windows 7 rollout was the fact that Amazon was releasing a piece of Windows software for reading Kindle e-books. The software is now available for download–and the site says that a Mac version is coming […]

[…] month, one of the few new pieces of news at the Windows 7 rollout was the fact that Amazon was releasing a piece of Windows software for reading Kindle e-books. The software is now available for download — and the site says that a Mac version is coming […]